Description

Beginning with music fundamentals, this text covers all the topics necessary for a thorough understanding of undergraduate music theory by focusing on music in context. The text links each of the tasks that comprise a tonal theory curriculum, explicitly connecting written theory (writing and analysis), skills (singing, playing, and dictation), and music-making outside the theory class.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES* Presents an outstanding quality, quantity, and diversity of exercises geared toward real music and real music situations* Explores not only standard four-voice harmony, but also other musical domains including melody, counterpoint, and a multitude of textures; the result is a text with applicability and relevance to all musicians* Includes
almost 4,500 musical examples from the common-practice repertoire in the text and workbooks, more than 90 percent of which are on the CDs included with the text and workbooks--nearly twenty hours of music on MP3 files (all music is performed, recorded, and engineered at Eastman)

New to this Edition

Revised with beginning students in mind, this edition contains more basic exercises as well as solutions to selected exercises in the text. Longer and more difficult exercises have been moved to the workbooks.

Streamlined and reorganized with fewer chapters (31, down from 37), the text presents the most commonly taught topics in sequence and moves less-common topics--such as invertible counterpoint, compound melody, and motive (covered in chapters 15, 16, and 23 of the previous edition)--to the appendices, where instructors may access them as their individual curriculum permits, or omit them altogether.

This edition offers a new presentation of fundamentals: the first three chapters provide a review and synthesis for students with experience in music fundamentals, and a 75-page appendix introduces key concepts for students with little or no experience. This allows instructors to choose the pacing that best suits their class and individual students.

Numerous musical examples include guiding annotations, with textural and structural reductions of more complex examples.

This edition presents more than 250 new literature excerpts and complete works for analysis and dictation, including new instrumental combinations.

New appendices offer further support: Appendix 5 covers terms and abbreviations used in the text and Appendix 6 includes selected answers to exercises in the text.

About the Author(s)

Steven G. Laitz is Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He is also an Affiliate Faculty Member in the Chamber Music Department at Eastman. Dr. Laitz is the current editor of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy.

Reviews

"The Complete Musician offers a depth of theoretical training and analytical insight that its competitors do not. It has, by far, the best musical examples of any textbook available on the market today. The exercises, which incrementally progress from easier to harder, are highly original and just plain fun to do."--Reginald Bain, University of South Carolina

"The integration of composition, analysis, aural recognition, and performance is the best feature of The Complete Musician. It subtly reinforces the idea that a musician needs an understanding of each aspect of the musical universe in order to excel in any of its specialized areas. The Complete Musician trains music students to think like composers, which cannot help but make them better performers."--Ciro Scotto, University of South Florida

"The most comprehensive, musically intelligent, and easy-to-use music theory textbook on the market."--Stefan Eckert, University of Northern Colorado

"This title ranks among the very best of its kind. . . . If you want a thorough and approachable book that gets behind, or into the head (indeed, heart and soul) of composers whose music you've known; want to know how it works the way it does, and why; want to see the mechanics, an appreciation of which serves only to enhance your sense of admiration for their technique, then The Complete Musician can be recommended wholeheartedly."--Review from Classical.net

Teaching Resources

provides solutions to all of the dictation exercises, sample solutions for more than 250 writing (e.g., figured bass and melody harmonization) and analytical exercises, supplementary examples, exercises, and teaching guidelines that detail effective strategies for each chapter.

* The two workbooks

have been significantly reorganized: Workbook 1 is now dedicated to written and analytical activities, including figured bass, melody harmonization, model composition, and analysis. Workbook 2 covers musicianship skills. Exercises within each chapter of Workbook 2 are organized by activity type: singing arpeggiations of the chord being studied, then within a tune from the literature; two-part singing; dictation; keyboard; then instrumental application.